##EMBED## Not only did Marie Curie win two Nobel Prizes, but her family has been the recipient of five total Nobel Prizes. She won two, her husband, Pierre Curie, won one. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won the Chemistry Prize in 1935 with her husband. Her second daughter was also the director of UNICEF when it won the Nobel Peace Prize […]
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Today I found out Silly Putty was invented by accident. Silly Putty was originally invented by James Wright, working at General Electric’s New Haven, Connecticut lab in 1943. At the time, the Allies were desperately short on rubber thanks to Japan invading various rubber producing countries in the Pacific Rim. This shortage on rubber was negatively affecting certain wartime […]
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##EMBED## Your nose runs when you’re crying because the tears from the tear glands under your eyelids drain into your nose, where they mix with mucus to form very liquidy snot. Source
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##EMBED## To date, four people have won a Nobel Prize twice. Those include: Maria Sklodowska-Curie (1903 and 1911, for discovery of radioactivity (physics) and later for isolating pure radium (chemistry)); John Bardeen (1956 and 1972, for invention of the transistor (physics) and for coming up with the theory of superconductivity(physics)); Linus Pauling (1954 and 1962, for research into the chemical […]
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##EMBED## Pop Rocks were invented by Chemist William A. Mitchell, who worked for General Foods. He also invented Tang, Cool Whip, quick-setting Jell-O, a tapioca substitute, and powdered egg whites, among other things. All total, he received over 70 patents in his lifetime. Source
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##EMBED## “That’s what she said” is thought to have been around since the 1970s with the earliest documented case of the phrase showing up on Saturday Night Live, spoken by Chevy Chase in a weekend update skit in 1975, which also happened to be the first season of SNL. “That’s what she said” was later hugely popularized thanks to Wayne’s […]
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##EMBED## Asparagus belongs to the same family as lilies. Once the asparagus buds start to open, the shoots themselves become unpalatable and woody, so typically only young asparagus shoots are used for eating, making all asparagus eaters baby killers. Source
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##EMBED## In 1909, T.D. Haubner of the SS Arapahoe became the first person to use the SOS distress signal call. The ship he worked on had lost its screw near the Diamond Shoals which are also known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”. Interestingly, a few months later Haubner, still working on the SS Arapahoe, received the world’s second SOS […]
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##EMBED## Uncle Phil, also occasionally known as James Avery in the real world, was also the voice of James Rhodes in the 1990s Iron Man series. Along with that, he was also the voice of Shredder in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Source
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Today I found out about a woman who lost the ability to smell, taste, see, and hear as a child, but went on to become the first deaf-blind person to be fully educated. The woman was Laura Bridgman. Bridgman was born in 1829 and it is thought she had full use of all her senses at birth. However, at the […]
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Next week will be accidental inventions week part two. This means all the full articles will be themed towards accidental inventions, though the quick facts will still be on random topics. If you happen to know of any popular products that were invented by accident, feel free to email me here and let me know. If the history of […]
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##EMBED## Along with the fact that eating KFC at Christmas is a tradition in Japan, Colonel Sanders is somewhat of a cult figure there. Not only is there a life-sized statue of the Colonel in front of most KFCs in Japan, but his memorabilia, like wind-up toys and figurines, can be found at many toy stores throughout Japan. Sources
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##EMBED## Wil Wheaton did voices for various romulans in the 2009 movie Star Trek. This was kept a secret until fairly close to when the movie came out. In his own words: “JJ Abrams called me. It was an entertaining conversation; I couldn’t believe he wanted me to do work on his film, and he couldn’t believe that I wanted […]
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##EMBED## One pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories. So if you were to eat around 350 calories more per day than your body uses, in just ten days, you’d gain one pound of fat. If you kept that amount of excess every day, you’d continue to gain weight until your body reached an equilibrium where the extra fat it’s […]
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##EMBED## When Michael J Fox auditioned for the role of Alex on Family Ties, he was completely broke. At that point, he had sold almost everything her owned to make ends meet and had canceled his phone service. He told his agent only to call at a certain time in the afternoon because he was busy. The number he gave […]
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Today I found out about the Tunguska Event, which was a 1908 explosion estimated to have been nearly 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and about 1/3 as powerful as the largest ever detonated atomic bomb, the Tsar Bomba. The Tunguska event occurred around 7:00 a.m. local time on June 30, 1908 near […]
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Today I found out the Bluetooth standard is named after a 10th century Scandinavian king. The man was Harald I of Denmark. “Bluetooth” is the English translation of “Blåtand”, which was an epithet of Harald I (Harald Blåtand Gormsson). Legend has it, he received this name due to being extremely fond of blueberries and consuming them so regularly and in […]
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Today I found out why your nose gets runny when it is cold. On an average day, a typical person’s nose will produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you’re breathing cold […]
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